So here we have the party that has for decades accused the right of wanting to bring back the prudish 1950s, which is also the party of “Sarah Palin is a cunt.”

Die, hipster die.

And, Ace points out, the Republicans beg for space on the fainting couch, and plead for the Democrats to share the smelling salts.

Heh

A few years back, I and a couple of buddies – we go back many decades -were sitting around talking politics. It hit me that this had become our primary topic of conversation, when as far as I could recall, in the past it had mostly only come up around election time, or if there was some major event in the body politic.

I pointed this out, and asked why they thought this might be so. We speculated that Bush and Obama were particularly polarizing, so this might have placed political divisions in the forefront, in more people’s minds. Case in point, we were two righties and a leftie in that discussion.

We rambled on a bit more, and then I asked “What did we use to talk about?

Sports and pussy.

But mostly pussy.

Do all guys do this?

No.

Do all straight guys like pussy?

By definition.

I have good male friends with whom I’ve never discussed it, and whom I have never heard use any kind of obscenity.

With my closest friends, however, I’ve always talked pussy, which reflects on me. It’s who I am. I like pussy.

However, the conclusion we came to in that conversation was that, given our age and situations, there was no longer much of a point to it. Politics made for a good substitute, in that it arouses heated opinion, and is always around, unchanging, a fact of life.

Like pussy.

This shit isn’t hard. The point is not talking snatch per se, but whose it is one speaks of.

If you tell your buddies your lady has an awesome pussy, speaking for myself, and my life time guy friends, we’re done.

Pussy is real thing that a lot guys like to talk about, but in an almost abstract, anonymously anecdotal, and non specific sense.

“There’s a girl my Lord…”

“I was 19, hitchhiking through Colorado, and this chick picked me up and then…”

“But it objectifies women! Would you want that done to your wives, girlfriends, and daughters?”

Here too, I see no moral conflict.

Tell me that you think a woman important to my life is hot and you’d like to bonk her, and I’ll punch your face in.

Talk trash about her around town, and I hear of it, I’ll punch your face in.

If it never comes to my attention, why should I care? How could I? And what men with whom I have no connection whatsoever say about women unknown to me is of absolutely no concern.

If this is not so for you, and you are a person who considers himself to be somewhere on the right, then I submit that first, you really should have more important things to think about; second, you have bought into Third Wave feminism, which is a creature of the Left, and has exactly the same goals as all the other Marxist columns assaulting our besieged culture: division, destruction of tradition, then, finally,anathematizing opposition, leading to its permanent suppression.

Now, while my assertions in regard to division and anathema should, I think, be easy to see, the breaking of tradition in this context may seem a stretch.

Is guys talking about pussy really a tradition?

Why, yes it is. That “locker room talk” is an idiom needing no elucidation is clear proof.

Well then, is it worth fighting for?

A tradition is worth fighting for if its abandonment is compelled by threat of force or social exclusion, so long as it meets this test:

It conforms to the Non Aggression Principle, in that no force or harm is intrinsic to it, or is initiated on its behalf.

Thus, chattel slavery was a millennia old tradition that had to go.

In this far less significant instance, one perhaps seemingly completely without significance, cat calls and wolf whistles would not meet the test; dudes jawing on about their good times, without naming names, would.

But, you might say, even if this is so, its just not worth going on about.

That is exactly the point Ace makes in the article linked above.

It is worth fighting for; indeed, must be fought for.

The left never rests. They understand the tactical and strategic value of every topographical feature in the cultural, political and linguistic battle-space, both large and small.

Meanwhile, as Ace notes, the Right rushes to concede, desperate for approval and terrified of exclusion, and so takes as its own each new trope. To extend my metaphor, the Right opens the gates, and then helps garrison the Left’s newly captured strong points.

OK, you say, that’s all sort of interesting, or maybe not, kind of abstract, high fallutin’, and overly intellectualized. The real problem is, that if you talk about women in this way, any woman anywhere, any time, you don’t respect women

No, it is you who do not respect them.

They got what they wanted, and then some. Wonder what they’d think of Miley?

They are human beings, endowed with agency, and most fortunately and wonderfully, after First and Second wave feminism, movements themselves rooted in the Enlightenment, in the West guaranteed every right of free citizens.

They can take care of themselves.

This is a point apparently forgotten or ignored in the face of the Left’s broader agenda.

Thus, while we find ourselves on the one hand bound with strictures on some speech in regard to sexuality that would seem Neo-Victorian, we also live in a culture where public lubricity is at such a level, that I think my eleven year old self – back then, feeling blessed with a clandestine look at a boob mag – would have expired from sheer joy.

London: They throw the C word around a lot over there, but it’s a bit much for me. Holy Smokes, is that a, um, pussy on the right ?

What is dirty and obscene depends on who is doing it. Thus we have feminists complaining about overly-sexualized characters in video games, and others – often the very same people – who organize Slut Walks and then attack men who enjoy the show. Obama and Clinton supporter Miley Cyrus twerks with strap-ons.

It’s not objectification if I do it to myself.

Paradoxical and contradictory, but not surprising. With the Left, cognitive dissonance, that is to say Double Think, is not only a means to hold and maintain an irrational belief system, but also, a weapon.

Don’t fall for this contagion.

To wrap this up, and return my ramble to the case at hand, if you don’t like dirty talk, don’t engage in it, or associate with those who do. Outside the entertainment industry, and the weird ravings of the cabal of gender obsessed activists, it’s probably on the decline

I’ve couched this in terms of Left and Right, but I’d like to think that some on the non-regressive Left – that is, people who used to be called, and were, liberals – realize they too have a stake in this.

Your words can and will be used against you should you fall from grace with the current and ever evolving orthodoxy. Don’t think they’ll never come for you. Take a look at Google’s “YouTube heroes” for a sense of what’s in the offing.

Trump’s Lewd Words

A bigger issue than most supporters and detractors realize.

Yet at the same time, trivial.

More than vulgar, certainly vile, and demonstrably obscene, are endless wars for no discernible purpose among peoples we fail to understand, manifest as we, and our allies using our weapons to level cities in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, as the best of our sons and daughters return dead and maimed, decade after decade.

At home, cities where the most vulnerable of our citizenry are far less safe than they would be on the West Bank.

Ruling classes that have discarded large swathes of their own people in favor of others from without, absent any consultation.

Even those who don’t follow Islamic issues as assiduously as I do must have a sneaking feeling that something big is afoot, with more to come.

First, for 2015, I’m going to compile a list of what I can dredge up from my memory –without recourse to the net.

Charlie Hebdo and the Jews

Garland

Memphis

Frenchman beheaded

Copenhagen

Kenyan college massacre

San Bernardino

Bangkok bomb

Tunisian attacks on tourists

Paris

Australian kid kills accountant

Russian Airplane

Bangladeshi bloggers murdered

UC Merced knife wielder

All right then. This is what I come up with, after checking my list and deleting some from 2014.

I’ve kept this to events that were widely reported and generally, involved western targets; the ongoing carnage in war zones such as Nigeria, together parts of Africa, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Southern Philippines, Israel, the Russian Caucasus, India, and the failed state of Pakistan is so unremitting that it amounts to background noise. The events I list are clearly jihadist, in that Muslims specifically targeted non-believers.

Now, let’s now look at these stories in chronological order, with the internet as an aide memoire.;

Charlie Hebdo’s first Cover after the attack. Cowardly Print and and broadcast media largely refused to show it. Oh yeah, try turning it upside down. Heh.

7 January 2015 Paris, Charlie Hebdo . Most will be familiar with the murder of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo’s editor Stephane Charbonneau and nine others. Once again Islamic rage at uncomplimentary graphics results in death. Two days later the two killers were taken out after a pursuit and manhunt that mobilized some 80,000 French Security forces.

Around the same time Ahamed Coubaily held patrons of a Paris Kosher supermarket hostage, killing two, before being taken out.

15 February, Copenhagen: In fallout from the Muhammad Cartoons affair of the last decade, a free speech debate at which Lars Vilik, Dansh cartoonist, and the French ambassador, among others, met to discuss the issue and show solidarity with the dead of Charlie Hebdo, when a Muslim gunman attacked. One attendee was killed. The killer then fled, to go on to kill a security guard at a synagogue, before security forces gunned him down. The usual excuses, obfuscation and ludicrous hand wringing ensued. “Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said there were no signs the gunman was part of a wider terror cell.

“This is not a conflict between Islam and the west,” she said. “This is a conflict between the core values of our society and violent extremists.”

The Roys in better days.

February 27: Dhaka, Bangladesh: Avijit Roy, an atheist blogger and American citizen, is chopped to bits on the street in Dhaka. His wife survives. This may seem like a stretch for this list, but as this blogger was both an American, and a defender of Enlightenment values, I see this as a proxy attack on Western beliefs. Mr Roy was neither the first nor the last such blogger killed in this manner in the streets of Bangladesh.

Mrs.Roy minutes after the attack.

Tunisia, birthplace of the “Arab Spring” this year saw two murderous attacks on Westerners, the first at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, on 18 March, thronged with visitors from a cruise ship. 20 dead, of many nationalities

Museum visitors flee Bardo Museum, Tunis

Later in the same month, tourists, mostly British, along with two Tunisian nationals, are gunned down on a beach resort. Final toll: 38.

Some of the dead, Sousse, Tunisia.

April 2: Garissa, Kenya. Islamists kill 147 students and staff at a teachers college. All were Christians. Muslims were spared, as the killers examined potential victims for knowledge of Islam before deciding to kill them, just as they had done to(number) at the Westgate mall massacre in Nairobi, 2013. I include this atrocity because Kenya has long discarded the puerile anti-Westernism of the immediate post-colonial era. The medium of instruction at the college is English. Kenya is with us.

Garissa, Kenya: dead multitudes

May 30: Once again, cartoons rile up the faithful. In Garland, Texas,a ”Draw Muhammad” contest is attacked. Only the gunmen die, as security and local LEOs take them down. A particularly egregious bout of “blame the victim” follows as the sponsors of the contest are told they asked for it, and should show more respect.

15 February,Copenhagen: In fallout from the Muhammad Cartoons affair of the last decade, a free speech debate at which Lars Vilik, Dansh cartoonist and the French ambassador, among other met to discuss the issue and show solidarity with the dead of Charlie Hebdo when a Muslim gunman attacked. One attendee was killed.

Frenchman beheaded in suburban Lyon.

June 26 Chasseue, France. A Frenchman is beheaded, by an ISIS sympathizer who also tries to blow up the bottled gas plant where the victim was manager.

July 26 Chattanooga, TN. Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez shoots up a recruiting center, then moves on to Naval Reserve center where 4 die immediately, one later of his wounds. Police then blow the jihadi away.

17 August, Bangkok: Erahwan Shrine, a popular site for locals and tourists, is bombed. 20 die. A murky plot emerges – to date not wrapped up – involving local muslims, Turks, Uyghurs (Chinese muslim minority) and Pakistanis.

A familiar sight in the wake of Islamic terror. This time, Bangkok.

October 2. Paramatta, Australia. An accountant working for the Police is shot outside the station where he worked. Cops then take out 15 year old killer, Farhad Khalil.

Paris: 13 November There is no need for me to get into this very deeply, as it is still so fresh in public memory that even politicians are forced to refer to it. As did SOS John Kerry, when he said:

“There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that.”

“There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘OK, they’re really angry because of this and that’,” Kerry said.

“This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people.”

So as long as it was people with a beef against Islam, and Jews, not such a big deal

November 4, Merced California. Faisal Mohammed, 18 year old student, knifed 4, before bystanders tackled him, and then campus cops plugged him fatally. Despite having a Xerox of an ISIS flag,and copious notes invoking Allah, we are told that he wanted revenge for being kicked out of a study club. This story pretty much died after the FBI came in and took over the investigation. We have a picture of the kid, accounts that say he was from Santa Clara, or Santa Clarita, two entirely different places, a banal statement from the family released by a lawyer and nothing more. Looking at the kid he could be of Pakistani descent, but who knows? The incurious media performs as expected.

Faisal Mohhamed: Who was this kid? We’ll probably never know.

December 2, San Bernardino, California. This too needs no recapping. 14 dead Americans in the Inland Empire,and Obama was finally forced to concede that threre amy be a problem.

That’s it for 2015, as far as I remember. Post Paris, we saw the three day lock-down of Bussels, capital of the Belgian state,as well as the EU, and home of NATO headquarters.

So, we have attacks on almost every inhabited continent , with Latin America unscathed. This region is, coincidentally, home to a vanishingly small Muslim population. The attackers are Middle Easterners, Africans, East Asians and native born Americans, some of immigrant descent, some not. All are Muslims, all citing Muslim scripture and tradition, despite the risible efforts or authorities to deflect. A common thread in official response is that we are somehow supposed to be calmed when told that an event has no links to terrorists groups. So what? It is the lone actor who will most likely succeed.

In fact all have links to the organized terrorism that is Islam. Not only do authorities, the press and academia continue to obfuscate, but, I suspect, are sometimes involved in active concealment. Consider this story:

This was Ocotober 26, 2015. The story is around for a couple of days after that, then we are told a suspect is in custody, and that there is no terrorism link. The end. Nothing further in English, nor in the Belgian press, neither in Flemsh or French, as far as I can find.

No name has ever been released. Given the prominence in jihadist activity Belgium has achieved, I find this interesting.

The year ended with much anxiety, reduced celebration over the holidays, and a final scare in Munich. As was the case in the story of the three American Dudes Who Kicked Jihadi Ass on a Train, despite all the horror I’ve recalled above, the real story is what doesn’t happen. Or hasn’t happened yet.

No large scale attacks, just the usual pranks by les jeunes/youths/jongen such as this

So now we are in 2016. So far, so good. The new year did see a minor incident in France on January 1, first broken as a story of an attack on a mosque, but in fact another of the faithful was instead attacking the French Army guarding a mosque. So, attacked by Muslims, the French guard mosques. In the US, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and other prominent Democrats visit a mosque in the wake of San Bernardino, as the New York Times tells us “American Muslims Under Attack After San Bernardino and Paris Terror”

It’s tricky to predict the future. I certainly hope 2016 does not see the acceleration in Muslim violence that many predict. I can confidently say, however, that the official cover for the religiously motivated crimes of Muslims will continue, and no doubt reach new heights of absurd mendacity, as public trust continues to decline.

The coming civil war in the West will be fought in the parliaments and the streets, will certainly begin in Europe, and may, one hopes, end there before it spreads.

Police guard mosque, Ajaccio, Corsica. 25 December, 2015.

There will be fighting between native Europeans and immigrant, largely Muslim populations. The first skirmishes have already started, as in Ajaccio, Corsica on December 25, 2015.

Muslims attack firemen and police. The following day, after a rally in support of their first responders, at which some of the injured appeared, some Corsicans trashed a Mosque. The full security force of the French State, as well as its media and academic components has come down against the protestors and on the side of the immigrants against “Islamophobia.”

Here we see the fissures that will define the conflict. The most important fight will be in the minds of the native European population. Nothing indicates any substantial part of the Muslim population joining the forces of secularism. Rather, they will sit it out while the Europeans, and other Western nations, deicide where they stand. The ruling class has demonstrated that it will not listen, so the choice will come down to acceptance, or resistance.

I see this divide in my own circle of family and friends. In a family of very progressive

Obama supporters, one spouse is worried about Islam. The other asked me what I thought about the probability of ISIS terrorism in the US. At the time, I said it was low. Events proved me too optimistic, yet the woman who asked me this question, clearly concerned, will not hear anything against Islam, and is joined in this obduracy by their gay son

I’ve been a little coy with the references here. This is a same sex union. One of the spouses clearly understands that such as she and her family are in the sights of Islam, and while hopeful for “reform” and an ascendance of “moderate Muslims” is reaching out to learn more about the threat.

Yet for her partner and one of their sons it it is as if to criticize Islam is to somehow betray liberal and progressive values. They prefer to support Bernie Sanders and worry about the Koch brothers.

At a Christmas dinner here in Bali with European friends the same division arose, to the point where it was best to pour more – lots more – drinks and calm everyone down. The husband is firmly committed to the European idea, proud of the welfare state. No dependent he, a good earner all his life, he happily pays taxes in his home country and makes his contributions to social programs. While he shakes his head at the inroads of Islam in Indonesia, he’s always been committed to pluralism, and the idea of a Europe incorporating new strains of ethnicity is something he has, and does support.

Recent events have shaken his confidence that assimilation and integration would take place, bringing a Europe that is still itself but renewed. His wife, however, has seen the videos CNN never shows: the vast columns of young men surging through the European countryside. She is terrified.

They spoke of parents who had always been liberal now sounding “almost racist.” And being “racist” is the worst thing one can be.

Not long ago, I ran into a British guy I’ve worked with on and off over the years. We never before discussed politics, but as a university educated teacher of English abroad, he’s from a demographic that doesn’t include many Tories.

Out of nowhere, a torrent of rage and despair at what Britain has become, and anger at those who seem to feel that this invasion is payback for the white man’s sins.

Such discussions, I’m sure, are now common between families and friends, in millions of homes. Many will have to go through a wrenching reappraisal of their values, and perhaps make common cause with people at whom they have long looked askance, even despised. A coastal progressive lesbian finds herself agreeing with Franklin Graham; an urbane European finds he may have to agree with the Front Nationale.

It is a realignment I have already gone through, but my change was not quick, nor was it pleasant. I had two immigrant grandparents. I knew many fine immigrants, some legal, some not, and in the 80s supported Reagan’s amnesty. One night, the first Christmas season after the law passed, I found myself in a miles long traffic jam headed North along the Mexican coast, most of the vehicles with California plates, as the newly legalized Mexicans returned from their holidays. I didn’t mind the delay; I celebrated it, and the change it represented.

I can no longer do so.

Our liberal values have served us well. Recent decades have seen an end to institutionalized discrimination and a vast expansion of opportunity for all. Now superseded by an anti-assimilationist ethos, a denigration of Western Civilization, and the introduction of Islam, they must be reexamined, reformulated, and thoughtfully applied

An increasing number of secular conservatives, liberals, and libertarians have realized is that Islam is antithetical to our values. Thus, having truly bettered our societies by discarding the idea of judging groups of people, we now find that we must judge one group, and find it wanting.

This is a war that will divide families, end friendships, and raise discourse from Sunday dinner discussion to matters of life and death.

While many in Europe, and particularly in the U.S. celebrate the actions of three young Americans, as well as a Briton and a Frenchman, in averting what was likely to be a massive loss of life as a jihadi prepared to attack train passengers en route from Amsterdam to Paris, others might not feel so festive. The progressive outlook has an uncanny ability to look at what has traditionally been seen as good and noble, and turn it into a dark narrative. It’s always gloomy in progressive land, where the sky is dominated by an overcast of cisnormative oppression, with a threat of fascist thunder showers.

You can bet your pork pie hat and hipster glasses that the KOS kids and Guardianistas are already spewing pixels as they break out their tedious memes so as to find white privilege hubris in heroism. Hell, I’ll throw in a case of Pabst.

Here’s how they might see it:

Aggressive American SUV Lovers Assault Religious Minority on French Public Transportation.

Ironically the cowardly attack began when 26 year old Ayoub el Khazzan, of Moroccan heritage, and an aficionado of collectible guns, hearing American voices, thought to share his enthusiasm.One of the Americans, Spencer Stone, an American airman, began pummeling the Frenchman. The USAF has of course been assaulting civilians for many decades, most notably at Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. A second friend, Alec Skarlotos, no doubt desensitized by his time serving in the American Occupation of Afghanistan, upon seeing a man of Middle Eastern appearance – and one exercising what many Americans stridently proclaim is their right to bear arms – gleefully joined the assault.
Sadly, the third friend, Anthony Sadler, of African heritage, was unable to see the sick contrariness of his joining in the brutality towards a fellow person of color. Mr. Sadler is described only as a college student, but whichever institution he is attending needs to ensure that it students are better informed as to privilege, colonialism, and the post colonial othering of marginal communities.

A despicable but predictable codicil to this sorry account was that Chris Norman, a 62 year old Briton, in true Blairite lackey tradition, joined the assault.

Reports say the three Americans are middle school friends. They should have remained in kindergarten until they learned to fight fair.

If one needed any proof that the United States, and a good deal of the rest of the world has simply abandoned any pretense of being serious, the top stories of today and a few days prior are convincing proof.

Last night, the story broke that “Jihadi” John, the masked killer of at least five in Iraq and or Syria had been identified. Along with this came a presser by CAGE, a “human rights” organization in the UK, which attempted to blame the nation’s security services for “radicalizing” Mohammed Emwazi, who

Cage directer Asim Qureshi in a diptych with the “beautiful young man” who went on to practice halal butchery on humans. Qureshi’s zabiba(prayer bump) should be a dead giveaway that he’s just another of the lying Islamic shills to whom Westerners give so much credence. The Qureshi were the tribe of the “Prophet” Muhammad, and half the swinging dicks in Muhammad land claim to be descended from them. Liars all.

turned out to be a degreed computer programmer raised in comfortable circumstances. A week before, the Obama administration had re-floated the idea that “violent extremists” are fueled by poverty and exclusion, a moronic, Marxist inspired, and easily debunked trope that has been around since Dubya.

Since I was a child, I’ve loved antiquity. However, I remember many of my classmates hating those museum field trips. This, though, is a bit much

ISIS took a break from releasing snuff films to putting out a video of the lads having a blast smashing statues from Ancient Assyria.

Nothing to do with Islam, of course. Bangladeshi-American atheist blogger Avijit Roy’s wife, Rafida Ahmed Banna, who survived, but lost a finger.

In Dhaka, a Bangladeshi atheist blogger, who also held American citizenship, was hacked to death on the street, with his wife also attacked but surviving. While the White house had nothing to say, a reporter did manage to coax a statement out of Jen Psaki, who was careful to note that at this point the attackers’ motive is unknown.

U.S. State Department spokes-bimbo, Jen Psaki. While lacking empirical evidence, I’d say she’s a genuine ginger, and I bet those hooters are real as well, unlike anything that comes out of her mouth.

The United States government, with zombie FDR nodding approval, decided to regulate the internet under a statute written in 1933. All data packets are equal. Down the road, some will be more equal than others. On the BBC, of all places, a commenter shook his head and said the US government has decided it wants the internet or free. Someone on state owned British media gets economics better than Mr. Obama.

In the same category of unaccountable Federal agencies we have the BATF talking about banning ammunition for the AR-15, a big scary looking rifle that anti-gun legislators have been unable to touch. It’s basically a .22, well .223.

In the United States Congress, the Republican majority, in its strongest position since the 1920s decides that funding DHS, the security super agency that has yet to catch a terrorist, is more important than keeping its promise to the electorate to fight and defund the President’s unilateral amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The president and functionaries of the regime, I’m sorry, government, natter on about “Climate Change,” (Nee Global Warming; isn’t it nice to see her all grown up?) as a foot of snow falls in Alabama.

In other times, people looked to the heavens for signs and portents of evil days to come.

My necromancer didn’t return my texts.

We have the United Sates, guarantor of the peace for some seven decades, in a constitutional crisis, a centuries old civilization conflict bathing vast areas in blood, the ancient nations of Europe suborned by Islamic fifth columns, and much more than I need go into here.

What is to come?

I have no idea, the best minds of our time are trying to determine the color of THE DRESS.

Lurch trots out his prep school French(Which must be pretty shitty because I can understand it.) to talk about liberty and stuff, with no mention of Islam.

Speaking of the lethal Islamist attack on the French satirical newspaper, #CharlieHebdo, John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, said this:

“No country knows better than France that freedom has a price, because France gave birth to democracy itself.”

Good Lord.

I was immediately moved to send the SOS a tweet, which I can’t find, but briefly mentioned some sorry aspects of the painful French journey towards democracy, and concluded with “You fucking moron.”.

Intemperate, I admit, but accurate.

Pericles giving funeral oration for the dead of the Peloponnesian War. He spoke in the Agora, the political heart of Athens. I first learned about Ancient Greece and Rome somewhere in 4th through 6th grade, and in greater detail in high school.

No one country gave birth to democracy and it would be a fair point to say that it is still evolving. However, it is, or was, common knowledge, that the earliest instances of some form of self rule were in the Classical world, first in the city States of Ancient Greece, and later, the Roman Republic.

While the Middle Ages saw the evolution of parliaments and assemblies, and oligarchic republics in Italy, the foremost of which was Venice, democracy with universal male suffrage did not appear until the Nineteenth Century.

France was significantly late to the party.

The American Declaration of Independence came in 1776 as we all know( Well, maybe not) and the French revolution in 1789, marked by the storming of the nearly empty Bastille and the slaughter of its jailors at the hands of a mob..

The Death of Marat, killed by Charlotte Corday, avenging the mass slaughter of the Girondistes. Say what? Never mind, the revolution always eats its own.

Thereafter followed factional fighting and various massacres conducted in the name of a National Assembly, the members of which were elected by no one. Danton, Marat, Robespierre: these names were and should still be by words for cold blooded revolutionary ferocity.

A National plebiscite with universal male suffrage for all workers (Thus, the aristocrats, and those living on investments were excluded) established the First Republic in 1792.

Executioner displaying the head of Louis XVI. Many more were to follow.

“The Bath of Nantes” in which Christian Royalists, men women and children, were loaded on leaky barges. Those that could swim were shot as they made for shore. The operation was supervised by “Committees of the Revolution.” Sound familiar?

1793-4 saw the Reign of Terror, in which first aristocrats including the royals went to the guillotine for the crime of being who they were. Ordinary people soon became implicated as counter revolutionaries, and thousands died at hands of the executioners

Those today who cringe at the horrors carried out by ISIS should remember that the French revolution saw bleeding heads held up before baying mobs lusting for more.

Then of course came Napoleon, followed by a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, who were in turn overthrown by the House Of Orleans, and a second Empire ruled by a nephew of Napoleon’s. He had been President of the Second Republic established in 1848, but by 1851, he’d decided he’d rather be emperor. The Germans captured him in the Franco- Prussian War. Now we are in 1870 and the Establishment of the Third Republic, which lasted until 1940.

Dead Communards, 1871. Revolutionary socialists took over Paris for a bit. Didn’t end well for them.

All along, plenty of turmoil, street fighting, and general confusion. If you just skimmed this part, I don’t blame you.

In the war time hiatus, France managed to demonstrate its commitment to liberte, egalite, and fraternite by assisting quite ably in the deportation of the majority its Jews to the east and their deaths.

General de Gaulle in Algiers 1958. Subsequently, he opened the way for Algerian Independence, to this day seen as a betrayal by aging irredentists.

The post war Fourth Republic lasted until 1958, when it was ended with the accession of General De Gaulle to the Presidency. While ostensibly not an actual military coup in Metropolitan France, the change was forced by the threat of armed force, after a coup in Algeria, and seizure of the Island of Corsica by French paratroops based in Algeria.

So far, the Fifth Republic has endured, so maybe the French have finally gotten it right.

During the American Revolution, the Iroquois Federation split over whether to support one side o the other, or just stay out. Here, Mohawks join Loyalists in battle against Continental regulars.

The American Revolution saw some vicious conflict, particularly where irregular forces were engaged, notably in Western New York and the Carolinas. After the war royalist sympathizers were forced to leave, not by government order, but by an impossible social situation. Most poignant of all, black slaves who saw no point in supporting a Revolution in which many of the principals were slaveholders, were in some cases re-enslaved, in others found themselves in Canada, or even Sierra Leone.

Nevertheless, after a steady expansion of the franchise and movement towards direct elections, the United States today lives under the original constitution of 1783, albeit much amended. Since 1789, nicely coincident with the French Revolution, the United States has continuously enjoyed peaceful transfers of power.

That a high official of the United States would in a foreign capital, ignore this history, for reasons I cannot fathom, is both disgusting and dismaying. Mr. Kerry is of an age and education, I am certain, long ago as it may have been since he studied history, that he knows these facts.

Our leaders in the West have no compunction in twisting and ignoring history in pursuit of their agendas. The perennial portrayal of the Islamic world as a passive victim, with no reference to the conquests that formed it, is a prime example of ahistoricity in support of power and manipulation.

Should France surrender to Islam, I doubt things will be quite so relaxed.

Mr. Kerry’s Paris remarks are further proof that ruling elites, confident in the collaboration of the,the media, and the ignorance of deliberately mis-educated electorates, will continue to distort the past in service of the future they envision for all of us.

The Crusaders in their heavy mail at first paid little attention to the arrows that struck and wounded them lightly. The Arabs stood a good ways off and their shafts were half spent when they struck.

The Europeans dismounted and formed a shield wall, waiting for the Arab onslaught.

Which never came. Just the unending flights of arrows. Of so many, some did strike vital areas, and heat and cumulative bleeding brought other men down. Maddened, some charged, and then the Arabs came and struck some down, wheeled and stood off again.

The sally was over, and the siege would not end today. As the Franks retreated to their castle they were followed by the ululating war cry La illalah ilahi”

There is no god but Allah.

Then my mother called me for dinner.

I put the solders and castle away. After dinner there would be homework, but I didn’t mind. In Catholic school we were studying the Crusades. We had just received our first issue of a Catholic magazine for juveniles, called “Crusade” and on its cover was Pope Urban, blessing kneeling knights as they took the cross.

We were to learn and celebrate the achievements of these warriors of Christ, but I had a secret. I was drawn to the bearded men in white robes, with their curved swords and exotic war cry. I was nine, and all I knew of Islam is that it had been at war with the Church, my church, the one I had been born into. The history book showed their sweep across the Near East and Africa and up into Spain and even beyond in the name of their god Allah, and their Prophet Mohammed.

In Geography there were pictures of some famous Islamic structures, the Taj Mahal, and the Hagia Sophia, which we learned had first been a great Church with minarets added later. Camels, goats, and women covered from head to foot. In school,the followers of Islam were called Mohammedans, and I cannot now remember when I first encountered the terms “Islam” and “Muslim.” I was a great reader and much interested in knights and armor. Old books with rotogravure illustrations taught me about Richard Coeur d’Lion, but also Saladdin and the just Caliph, Haroun al-Rashid, walking his city incognito in the night.

At the movies there was “the Seven Voyages of Sinbad,” with a cute princess, a roc,and a caliph, and on the black and white television. “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and old Sabu movies, all with men in robes and turbans, and sometimes,not very well veiled women with excitingly bare midriffs and transparent harem pants, but I don’t remember anyone mentioning Allah.

An old ship mate of my father’s had worked in Saudi Arabia for a while, and he showed us slides of the dusty streets and veiled women, and close ups of comically grinning camels. I had no idea why their women were veiled ,but I do remember one excellent shot of a crowd at an Aramaco(Arabian American Oil Company, now wholly Saudi government owned) night ball game. Women in the back, all in black, boys in checkered headdresses in front, drinking Pepsi.

Richard Halliburton with Abdul Aziz, first king of Saudi Arabia.

This then was what I knew of Islam, which we knew as Mohammedanism, as I played at Crusaders versus Saracens: it was sort of a heresy, its warriors had conquered great swathes of the wold, starting from Arabia, and the lands of Islam looked quite exotic, the kinds of places I’d like to explore, like Richard Halliburton, celebrity explorer and writer of the 20s and and 30s, who swam the Hellespont with the minarets of Constantinople behind him, and met the King of Arabia. Islam seemed largely for and of Arabs, although I knew the Turks were in there somewhere.

Then, in 1961, my father was transferred to Sumatra along with all of us. I read up in the library. Islam was the religion of the great majority of Indonesians, I found, and took up some basics: they had no Trinity. Muslims prayed five times a day,( and I found that particularly awful, as I hated church and did not enjoy good night prayers. My mother’s occasional spurts of piety sometime resulted in family rosaries that seemed interminable), and revered Jesus as only a prophet, didn’t eat pork, or drink alcohol, and went on pilgrimage to Mecca, that forbidden city Halliburton had tried to visit.

In May 1961, we boarded a plane, then a ship, then more planes, and one bright, equatorial day, my encounter with Islam began.

“College Wins US Debate Championship By Repeating the N-Word Over and Over, Speaking Incomprehensibly”

This particular bit of progressive nonsense was brought to my attention by WeaselZipppers, a right blog that can be counted on to put forth the most egregious outrages of Progressives, Leftists, Democrats, Islam, and the Obama administration
I enjoy agenda sites, but check things out. Here, Zippers links to a site called Pundit Press, which has further links to an Atlantic story with this headline and sub header:

Hacking Traditional College Debate’s White-Privilege Problem

“Minority participants aren’t just debating resolutions—they’re challenging the terms of the debate itself.”

Speaking truth to power or something.

The Tyson winners

“On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities.”

.

It appears that the Atlantic writer has no experience in debate, or training in rhetoric. “Premise” Is defined as “a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion.”

No conclusions or inferences were made. The Towson students simply changed the subject. The proceedings then went in an unusual direction:

“Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!””

“Fuck the time!”

I rather like that. Good song title or t-shirt meme.

The Atlantic is somewhat reticent in describing the flavor of the debaters’ language and thrust of their rhetoric. Pundit Press is more forthcoming and offers some transcription. The transcription is accurate as far as it would be possible to transcribe this kind of speech, if such it is. (A short video link here, and the entire session, here)

“Uh, man’s sole “jabringing” object disfigure religion trauma and nubs, uh, the, inside the trauma of representation that turns into the black child devouring and identifying with the stories and into the white culture brought up, uh, de de de de de, dink, and add subjectively like a white man, the black man!”

I’m stumped by “jabringing” as the only search result leads back to this article.

A “ jabring” is apparently a breed of cat and maybe a word in Swedish.

And this:

“When the n*****, uh, sees these pains and suffering that he can only, uh, envision himself that he, uh, does not see another n***** that he, uh, can feel sympathy for or embrace, but rather, uh, that, a-bluh, that that otherness gets obliterated.”

I thought I could follow this, but came up short. ”Otherness” is bad,we’re often told, so the speaker should be happy that it is obliterated, but the tone indicates otherwise. Perhaps an undigested bit of Edward Said in an otherwise unidentifiable spew. The passage is not coherent enough to be termed a rant.

As one would expect, comments express outrage at falling, or non-existent standards, ghetto trash talk and the Third Worldization of America,

As for me, I’m not so hard on these kids.

I get what they are doing. I was a high school debater, eventually captain of the team.

And I was crap.

We had intramural debates, and those we called “Oxford Style” full on snark, sarcasm, vilification of opponents, a lot of humorous nastiness, with the audience awarding victory. I did quite well at those. It was basically verbal bullying, elevated above the playground variety by elegant terms of phrase, but just as vicious.

Interscholastic debating, under the aegis of the association to which we belonged, went on throughout the year on a single topic. A thick briefing book was issued and participants were enjoined to learn the basics, and go on to their own research.

Me getting my ass handed to me at a regional debate, University of New Hampshire, 1965

I never did because I was bone idle, and my crew was a similar bunch of no accounts, whom I made no effort to whip into shape. So, while we often got high marks for delivery, we were marked down for everything else.

Now, we had well developed vocabularies and rhetorical technique, and even some degree of oracular artistry, but our basic skill was the same as that deployed by these Towson kids:

Bullshit

The difference was, of course, that we were not rewarded for it. Not only did we bring home no trophies, but the headmaster made sure I was left out of the yearbook picture.

Some comments express concern for the debaters, in that these synthetic accolades set them up for failure in later life. I’m not so sure in their particular cases. The articles give no information on their fields of study, but even if their degrees are insubstantial, their notoriety should help, and I expect places will be found for hem in government, NGOs, or even progressively oriented corporations.

One has to remember that these young people are outstanding in their milieu. Those who are not, but whose education reflects the same kind of standard, will not have much to recommend them. This is one more example of the endless bigotry of low expectations, and the accommodation, and even celebration, of a culture that does not respect learning. Any who aspire to emulate the Towson debaters may have gone to college, but they are in the same trap as are others who eschew schooling to become rappers or athletes.

Not everyone can; most cannot.

The Atlantic quotes academics finding nothing wrong in all this, and who, indeed, celebrate it. These are the real villains of the piece. They have their tenure, but those schooled under their ideas will be lucky to have any kind of job.

In the end, these kids are right. There are white people keeping them down,

Language changes, and the rate of change has been accelerating ever since the invention of print.

Home from College: Parental Grooming Rules in Effect

I’m old enough to remember people, even older, saying things like “We had a gay old time,” without any raised eyebrows or eye rolling, , although there may have been someone in the background stifling a giggle even then.

When I joined the YMCA, at about age nine, it still had nude swimming. My Dad warned me to be on the lookout for “queers.” Somehow, I knew what he was talking about although I don’t remember when anyone told me exactly that that meant. Part of the free floating zeitgeist of scary childhood things.

When I lived in San Francisco in the 70s, the straight-gay dichotomy was widely understood, with some of the more militant using the word “breeders” for those who tended to PIV sex. Having sex with women was something I was very much in favor of, and had been from the first time I heard of it, although I didn’t get the connection with reproduction until a bit later.

So, in the late 60s I chose to be not straight, and the hope of bonking women was a major factor in the move.

No long Hippie hair. Just what was known as a “Jewish ‘Fro.” I’m Irish

How so?

It may be that the term straight for heterosexual was already current in the time, but among hippies, and various adherents of the counter culture, including hangers on like me, it meant what the Beatniks had called “square.” Those of us who were emphatically not straight called ourselves “heads, as in “Feed your head(with mind-altering substances)” in Jefferson Airplane’s “Go Ask Alice.” This signifier meant a person likely smoked weed, and maybe did some more interesting chemicals as well, but only psychedelics. Opiates and speed were anathema. It also indicated a general political outlook: anti-Vietnam War, interested in peace initiatives of all sorts, and partial to social legislation that wouldn’t cost us any money, largely because we didn’t have any. Marxism, however, was beyond this pale. Guys quoting Karl and his acolytes and telling us that our partying was counterrevolutionary weren’t heads; they were just crashing bores.

The political side for most was rather marginal. “ Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll.” And sex meant hippie chicks. Their glorious tresses, fresh and unmade up faces, halter tops and tight jeans adorned the happenings, protests, and concerts that were nearly unending, a seamless time of, um, stimulation, for young males.

Well, I read “Rolling Stone, fooled around with stuff that the FDA did not approve, saw Cream, Hendrix and Zeppelin, but hippie chicks…didn’t happen for me.

Back then, straights didn’t enjoy altered consciousness, and quite a few got married before they had sex, or married the girls they had sex with, worked, saved, bought stuff, and had children. Hitchhiking, sometimes you’d be picked up by some poor slob of a straight hoping you had a joint, and who would assure you that he really was a head. And, at times the transaction went the other way.

I wish I could apologize to all those straights I snickered at because, as was inevitable, for me, at any rate, I did cut my hair, work, buy suits, save, marry and have children. And quite liked it.

So, I was straight, both ways, all along.

In view of the current furor of same sex marriage, or marriage equality, one could also say that a lot of gays, too are straight.

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